Royal Institution Discourse: How to get a molecule to obey you

Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu takes the stage at The Royal Institution on Friday 30 October, with her talk How to get a molecule to obey you as part of the Discourses. It's a big name in pharmaceutical science stepping into one of London's oldest lecture series, and the subject is one that hits closer to home than you might first think: how we actually get a drug into the part of the body that needs it.

Uchegbu is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London and president of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She spends her time studying drug transport and developing nanotechnology-powered medicine formulations, and she's the founder and chief scientific officer of Nanomerics Ltd. She was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2025, and she's also written Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Our Lives and Why We Should Care, with copies available after the talk.

In the lecture, she walks through the reality of drug development: the industry often tests over 5,000 compounds before a single usable drug emerges, at a cost of around a billion pounds per medicine. From there, she explains the central challenge of her work — how to guide those compounds to diseased tissue while sparing the healthy stuff. It's a look at the sheer scale of the trial and error that goes into a single treatment, and the science used to make it more precise.

The talk is part of the Discourses, the Royal Institution's oldest and most prestigious series, which dates back to 1825. It's hosted figures like Michael Faraday, James Dewar and JJ Thomson; audiences there saw Dewar's first public liquefaction of air and Thomson's announcement of the electron. Uchegbu is the next name in that line.

It's at The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS, in the theatre on the first floor, which has step-free access via lift. Doors open at 7:20pm, with the talk starting at 7:30pm. Theatre tickets are £20 or £15, and it's free for Ri Members and Ri Patrons. There's also a livestream on a 'pay-what-you-can' basis, minimum £5, with an Eventbrite booking fee added to the price.